It is essential to provide a sterile environment in an operating room to prevent the furtherance of disease and infection through the transmission of bacteria to or from the patient. The techniques for sterilizing an operating room and the personnel and equipment therein have become more refined and more complex over the years, as it is no longer sufficient to merely provide sterile garments and instruments.
Surgeons and other medical personnel in an operating room are required to scrub thoroughly and to wear sterile clothing. The equipment in the operating room is generally sterilized where possible and with particular emphasis on anything coming into contact with the patient. However, the need for a sterile environment has gone beyond these long recognized minimal standards. Current trends are to provide a filtered laminar flow of air from above the operating room downward away from the operating table and out of the room. This positive pressurization attempts to force any non-sterile particles from the room.
The need to sterilize the surgical instruments obviously has been long recognized. The trend has been to provide disposable sterile products wherever possible and to thoroughly sterilize, for example, by autoclave techniques, all non-disposable articles. Since autoclave techniques are expensive (the materials that can be autoclaved are also relatively expensive), time consuming and not completely reliable, the preferred method is to use disposable instruments.
Electrosurgical techniques are frequently used in major operations to provide coagulation of blood during the surgery. It has been found that electrosurgical techniques are enhanced when an inert gas is used in conjunction with the electric charge since the inert gas allows coagulation of the blood with less desiccation of the tissue.
Electrosurgery requires the use of an electrosurgical pencil for transmitting the electric charge to the patient. Thus, the pencil must be sterile since it is proximate or in contact with the patient during surgery. If gas enhancement is used with the electrosurgery, a gas tube is included on the pencil to direct gas from a gas source to the pencil. Since the electrosurgical generator (which provides the electric charge) and the required equipment therewith cannot be completely sterilized after each use, a filter is typically provided between the gas supply and the gas tube.
One device, as provided by Bard Electronics, Inc., has a filter built into a platform between the gas source and the gas tube. The filter is fixed to a platform or unit used in electrosurgery. The electrosurgical pencil is then plugged into the platform to obtain the electric charge and the gas. Unfortunately, there is a gap between the filter and the plug-in for the pencil which allows any bacteria therein to be transmitted through the pencil by the gas. Additionally, the filter is located in a position that is not conducive to easy access for changing and can be overlooked or forgotten, whereas, it is preferable to change or clean the filter after each use to reduce the risk of contamination. In light of the drive to provide the operating room with a sterile environment, this lack of sterility in the electrosurgical instruments is generally unacceptable. Thus, there is a need for a method and apparatus to provide a sterile filter and a disposable electrosurgical pencil that eliminates the need for filtering before the pencil's gas tube.